


Nothing But a Name

by printers_devil



Series: In All Safe Reason [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anxiety, Crests (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Cunnilingus, F/M, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, First Time, Hand Jobs, Library Sex, Manipulation, Oral Sex, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/printers_devil/pseuds/printers_devil
Summary: She had practiced so hard all these years. She could give a perfectly good speech to Father's allies without rehearsing, and without stammering even once. But faced with Claude, who wasreallyclever, and whose lovely green eyes pierced her like a lance, she faltered.After five years, Marianne is finally among friends again, and as the  Alliance moves toward war, her adoptive father wants her to gather information on the new Duke Riegan's plans and motives. This goes both far better and far worse than she expects it to.
Relationships: Marianne von Edmund/Claude von Riegan
Series: In All Safe Reason [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729396
Comments: 20
Kudos: 58





	Nothing But a Name

**Author's Note:**

> Here's something that interests me: in most of Marianne's epilogues, it mentions that she becomes a great politician under Margrave Edmund's tutelage. We don't hear learn much about Marianne's adoptive father... so how early does that teaching start? I wanted to dive into that, and write some porn, too. 
> 
> This ended up more wholesome than I meant it to, but I'm not mad about it. Also, this contains quite a bit of Hilda/Marianne, but because Hilda doesn't actually appear in the fic, I didn't tag it. Maybe someday I'll actually write it :D

In her school days, her adoptive father had told her not to get too close to anyone, but here she was: back at Garreg Mach. Her adoptive father hadn't wanted to let her go. If she died in the war Claude assuredly meant to embroil himself in, there wouldn't be a von Edmund heir. The continuation of—and return of Crest-bearers to prominence in—the von Edmund line was paramount, now that the family had taken its rightful place among the five great families of the Alliance. Marianne had argued that if she was not in the thick of the action, the family would look like cowards. She was an able healer, after all, and there would be any number of people willing to sacrifice life and limb to protect her. 

Father had laughed at that, and said that Marianne had learned well. More than that: she would be a worthy Margrave Edmund someday. However, if she was to go, she needed to do her duty to the Margraviate and give him regular reports on Claude von Riegan's plans. Edmund lands were far away the Empire, and even with spies, it was hard to get reliable information. 

Marianne assented. There was no way he would have let her go otherwise. Sometimes, the best way to deal with her father was to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear, and then go out and feed the birds. 

She'd met Raphael and Lysithea on the road to Garreg Mach and found Claude and the professor in a bandit's nest, battered and bloodied. She had not even thought about it: she'd healed them entirely. Her range had improved over the past five years. The professor, thus restored, had simply taken her sword in hand and driven into the next wave of bandits, but Claude, atop his enormous wyvern, had looked at her as though she was the morning sun itself.

A letter from her father arrived as soon as they and the Knights of Seiros were settled in, cajoling her to hurry up: _Report your progress on obtaining Duke Riegan's plans to me posthaste, daughter, and tread cautiously with that boy._ _Never be sure of anything he says; you know as well as I do that he will lie to you._

 _I will do my duty,_ Marianne had said, chafing at his phrasing. Claude had been always been a friend to her. She was out of her adoptive father's reach, and she would carry out his wishes in her own time. The thought thrilled her: _In her own time,_ and no one else's.

But she needed to wait. The time was not right yet. More people arrived at the monastery every day, all of whom wanted assurances from the leader of the Alliance that this war against Emperor Edelgard was the right course of action, and she could not find a moment to get Claude alone. There were challenges, too: they needed to supply an army, armies, without Adrestian grain or Adrestian steel. The Academy had taught her little about this, but over the past five years of decreasing their territory's alliance on Imperial exports, Father had taught her plenty. Making herself useful to Seteth saved Marianne from the exhausting ordeal of greeting nobles, supplicants, tradespeople, and gawkers. 

Lorenz and Lysithea didn't think too hard about how useful she was being, and Ignatz and Raphael weren't privy to the details of the deals nobles made with one another. Leonie, who had gotten very beautiful and very strong in the last five years, looked askance at her quiet suggestions sometimes. Hilda complimented her as extravagantly as she always did, mostly when Marianne's ideas meant she had to less work. 

Only Claude seemed to _really_ notice her, how competent she was, how smart she could be. There was a secret smile that he gave her every time she gave a good suggestion. She held each one of them close to her heart, like drowning woman hoarded air. She wasn't just his healer, she was an _asset_. She was useful, she was worthy. When things went wrong, they were not her fault. 

Marianne repeated these things to herself as she approached him in Garreg Mach's ruined library, two weeks after they'd returned. He'd always spent half of his time there when they were students—why, she could not imagine. Everything seemed to come easy to him. He was always the recipient of the professor's rare smiles. She'd done her hair—had Hilda do her hair—into a single neat braid. She'd left her surcoat and capelet off, too, the better for him to see her form in. Hilda assured her that people did think she was pretty. If that was true, maybe this would be easier; Hilda was beautiful, and people did what she wanted them to all the time.

"Claude," she said softly. 

He looked up from the book he'd been reading. People didn't try to hide things from her; they thought she simply didn't notice. He was reading a biography of the Four Saints that had banned by the Church a hundred years ago. "Marianne," he said. The smile he gave her was thin, uninterested. 

_Oh, no,_ she thought _I picked the wrong time. Everything is ruined, I should give up..._ But she was better than that now, she hoped; nothing had gone wrong yet, and therefore, she could get through it. "I was wondering...." She trailed off, sitting next to him. 

"Yes?" Claude looked up again from his book, scowling. Something was frustrating him, and he wanted her to go away. People usually wanted her to go away. But the scowl passed as soon as it appeared. "What do you need?" 

"I, um, was wondering," she said. "After the war, when all of this is finished... what do you want to do? What do you really want to do?" 

Claude looked surprised. Marianne did not like many of Father's lessons—they bent her out of her natural shape—but she found that she did like surprising people. "Change the world," he said. "Make something better for people like me. And you," he added. "You, too." 

Marianne thought very hard for the moment about what Hilda would do if she wanted something from Claude. Hilda would take Claude's hand and stare deeply into his eyes, part her lips a little bit, look hopeful and delighted to see him. Marianne had seen her do it a dozen times, and so that was what she did. Claude's eyebrows rose in surprise again, and Marianne faltered, nearly withdrew her hand, wondering if she'd played her cards too soon. Lying was a sin in the eyes of the Goddess, but her heart was not false here. This was about her own curiosity as much as what Father wanted to know.

"What does that _mean_?" Marianne asked. "Really, ah, what does it mean? I'm sorry, I just... I want to help. As much as I can." 

"Is that so?" Claude replied, looking down at their joined hands. "Oh, come on, you look like you're going to cry." With his free hand, he stroked a thumb over her chin, smiling gently down at her. He'd never touched her before—none of her classmates had, except Hilda. 

With a start, she realized that he was pulling her toward him. "I... I just...." 

"You've never done this before, huh," Claude said. Now his voice was harder, and his grip on her hand was tight. The hand on her chin fixed her head in place.

Marianne felt her face flush a furious shade of red. "I...." 

She had practiced so hard all these years. She could give a perfectly good speech to Father's allies without rehearsing, and without stammering even once. But faced with Claude, who was _really_ clever, and whose lovely green eyes pierced her like a lance, she faltered. _That little upstart,_ her father had said of Claude once, upon receiving a letter from him: something about taxes and routing Edmund ships through Derdriu. _You'd think he'd be stupid and pliable like the rest of the Riegans, but the oldest daughter had to fuck off to Almyra and whelp them a smart one._

She remembered this as he pulled her toward him. It didn't matter to her where he was from, only that here, now, he brushed his thumb over her knuckles. His hands were rough from years and years of archery—she had hardly held anything more challenging than a magic staff since she'd left the Academy. It was only on the rarest occasion that she let anyone touch her, and the contrast of his skin on hers made her heart pound.

Almost absentmindedly, he brought Marianne's hand up to his lips, sucked one of her fingers into his mouth. She felt a pulse somewhere lower, too, when she felt his teeth graze her tender skin. 

"What do you want, marriage? We could unify our houses," Claude said, releasing her. "Wow, what a coup for the Margrave. First he becomes one of the Great Lords, then his daughter marries Duke Riegan. That's a lot of luck for one man." Even if there hadn't been a wry twist to his mouth, she had been mocked enough in her Academy days to know when someone was making fun of her. Still, if she had to marry, it would not be so bad to be married to Claude von Riegan. 

"Please," she said, for want of anything else to say. Every inch of her skin felt alive, electric, too tight. 

"What, you like the idea of that? Maybe you don't want marriage, though," Claude continued. "Maybe you want this." And before her racing thoughts could catch up with his words, he pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist, irresistibly slow. 

She gave half a thought to pulling away, but with delicate fingers, he undid the tiny buttons at her sleeve cuff. She gave another thought to protesting this, but it was swept away by the sight of him rolling up her sleeve. It transfixed her. He uncovered her arm to the elbow and set his lips to the delicate skin of her forearm, pausing after each kiss as though to savor her taste. By the time his mouth made it to the crook of her elbow, she was trembling all over, hot with some feeling she did not care to name. 

"Look at you," he said, brushing some hair away from her forehead. "Shaking."

He didn't look unaffected by it, either. He ran a finger over the delicate skin on the underside of her arm.

"You haven't even done this with Hilda?" he asked, and she shook her head even more vigorously. Of course not; Hilda was far too good for her. "You know you were all she talked about for a good four moons, back when we were students, right? _Marianne said this, Marianne did that, Marianne smiled at me for two and a half seconds, wow, she's so pretty, wow, she's so good at magic._ She said you were too good for her to just play around with, though, so I guess not."

"I'm _not_ ," Marianne burst out. "I'm... I'm...." 

Nothing. Less than nothing. A person born with the worst imaginable Crest, who'd had the poor fortune to be plucked from a cadet branch of the von Edmund family and thrust into the position of heir to the Margraviate. If her parents had not disappeared (and by now, she knew Father well enough to know that they had most likely "disappeared" into an unmarked grave), she might have lived out her life in genteel obscurity. Everyone around her would have been safe from the misfortune she would bring down on their heads.

Claude tutted her and brought her sharply out of her reverie. "Hey, Marianne," he said. "Come on, chin up, I need you at your best. You don't cause problems, you solve them. You're the best healer I know." As he spoke, he stood up and guided her motions so that she sat on the library table. She let herself be moved. It simply made sense to do what Claude wanted you to do. "You know you've got my ear."

He sat back down in his chair, looking up at her. There was a light in his eyes—but she'd known Claude long enough to know that he could summon that whenever he wished. He was _charming,_ and she'd thought that after five years she would be more than capable of turning away from him, but now she was not so afraid of him as she'd been. She didn't want to run when he tried to talk to her. She could meet his eyes. She still felt the imprint of his lips on her wrist, and she felt a dull heat between her legs, the desire to bear down on something. 

Both of his hands were on her knees now, his fingers spread wide, and his gaze fixed her in place as surely as if he'd shot her with an arrow. "I can tell that you're fishing for information to send to Margrave Edmund. You're pretty transparent. Also, I read everyone's mail, and wow, he sure expects you to work miracles. "

"He does. It's awful," Marianne replied solemnly. She didn't care about the mail: no one sent her letters but the Margrave. Her entire awareness was those hands, those big hands. 

"Next time, don't try to manipulate me, okay? Come to me, and we can figure out what to tell your father together."

"All right," she said. "We can... we can do that. Together." 

"Good," he said. "Good." Slowly, as if he himself was not sure what he was doing, he slid his palms up Marianne's thighs, then back down again. When she cast Nosferatu, it felt a bit like this: warmth sinking into her skin, a little bit of extra life that she'd stolen from another. But she was not taking this by force. Claude had offered it to her. _I don't deserve this_ warred with _Yes, you do, you try so hard._ And in Claude's voice, in the back of her head: _Cast your burdens aside._

She lifted her skirts up to her knees, squeezed her eyes shut, waited for Claude to tell her to put them back down again. Nothing. He leaned back in his chair, his arms behind his head, trying to look casual. 

"Keep going," Claude murmured, glancing around the library. When she hesitated, hands twisting in her dress, he added, "Don't worry, there's a tournament on right now. Everyone will be at the training grounds to watch Catherine and Shamir face off in the finals. No one's going to walk in on us." 

Marianne nodded and bit her lip, then pulled her skirts up another few inches, to show him the sliver of skin above her stockings. She wore her old, much-washed school stockings, a plain navy blue, and she'd had to patch the right knee. With a gentle touch to the inside of her shin, he spread her legs wide, and she drew her dress the rest of the way up, revealing the rest of her thighs. He was looking, now, at that bare expanse, and farther up, where only she had touched herself. With so many layers of petticoats, she didn't need to wear anything else under her dress to be decent.

She knew what happened now. Hilda had told her about it, in great detail, whenever she had sex, while Marianne blushed and begged for her to stop. _You're so cute!_ Hilda had said, every time. She thought for a moment about Hilda sitting behind her, holding her while Claude did this, and she squirmed. 

Claude kissed the inside of her knee just as he'd kissed the inside of her wrist, with the patience of someone who had nothing better in the world to be doing. "Breathe, Marianne," he said, his voice pitched deeper than it had been before. "I haven't even gotten to the fun part yet." 

"Are you sure you want to do this," Marianne said breathlessly, as he hitched one of her thighs over his shoulder, dragged her to the edge of the table. His warm breath fanned out over her core, and her cunt tightened around nothing, waiting to be filled. 

"What," Claude said. "Do I want to eat you out in the middle of the day, in the library of the most holy place in Fódlan, where anyone could see us?"

Rather than wait for her answer, he grazed his teeth over the skin of her inner thigh, and she bit down on her own fist to keep from yelping in surprise. But it felt good. Everything felt good. His mouth was so close to her pearl. He was the leader of the Leicester Alliance, of course he wasn't doing anything he didn't want to. 

And then he set his mouth and tongue to her, and Marianne's moan was high-pitched, desperate. He laid the flat of his tongue against her pearl and let her work herself against it, use him for her pleasure; he kissed his way down from it to lavish attention on her opening. When he returned to her pearl, she hardly noticed his fingers sliding inside of her, first one, then two, driving gently into her. She welcomed the little stretch; she'd put things inside of herself before, but to have something wholly out of her control was thrilling, not frightening.

He was relentless. He took her apart. She spasmed around his thrusting fingers again and again, pulled at his hair so hard he grunted in pain, ground her core against his face, and he did not stop—he held her there at her peak for a long, long time, while she cried out her prayers to the Goddess to the ceiling. It broke her down like she felt her Crest want to do sometimes, made her nothing more a beast seeking its own pleasure, but she _liked_ this. This was not frightening. Both of her hands were fisted in his hair, and he groaned against her, his tongue working against her ceaselessly.

Finally, it was too much, and she fell limp against the table. And still, Claude kept going, lapping tirelessly at her, adding another finger. She panted and shoved against his head, trying to make him stop. He ignored her, and he wrung one final, pitiful orgasm from her; she clenched weakly around the hand inside of her. 

She had not known that it could be like _this_. This was like what she did to herself under her sheets in the way that the spring breeze was like a Cutting Gale. She lay there in a daze for a time—how long, she could not say—and did not bestir herself until she saw Claude stand up. 

"You know, I've always liked you, Marianne," Claude said, stroking his cock as he looked down at her, splayed out before him. He sounded as though he was trying very hard to seem calm, even as he jerked himself roughly over her. "You're not going to try to lie to me again, are you? You'll come to me if you need help." 

Marianne nodded mutely, staring at his cock. It was thick, heavy. His foreskin drew back and forth over the head, and she found herself sitting up, reaching for him. "You've been so nice to me," she said, one of her hands covering his mid-stroke. He paused, squeezing himself tight. This close, she could see that his cheeks were flushed. "Please, let me make it up to you." 

He pulled his hand away, giving her a strained smile. She felt awkward stroking him, but he thrust his cock into the circle of her fingers. "Tighter, you won't break it," Claude groaned. She obliged him, felt the heat at her core flare to life again, improbably, after what he'd just done to her. "Good," he said, "that's good. I _am_ nice, or I'd have this inside you right now. Do you want that?" This seemed to be a rhetorical question, because he kept talking as she worked at him: "You get so wet. I barely have to do anything. You'd be so good under me." 

At that, he took control, drawing her hand up and down on his cock the way he wanted it. His head was thrown back, his lips parted, as he moaned. Marianne liked him like this, coming undone under their hands together. What would it be like—if she put her mouth on him, like he'd put his mouth on her? Or if she was _under him_? He seemed to buckle forward, and his forehead touched Marianne's, his eyelids fluttering shut with the pleasure. When he spent, his come landing all over her palm and her inner thighs, she trembled along with him. He was so much stronger than her, so much stronger than all of them, and with one hand she'd made him shake like an autumn leaf. 

"Claude," she said, wiping her soiled hand off on one of her petticoats. His come was already drying on her legs, and the sensation was strange but not unpleasant. He opened his eyes slowly, and stroked her face with a tenderness she had rarely dreamed of. 

_You mustn't dream,_ she thought sternly to herself. _When the war truly starts, the Goddess may yet decide to take you into her arms, where you belong._

"That was good," Claude said. He put his cock away, then tidied her up: wiped her legs with her petticoats, rearranged her skirts so that they were tidy around her legs, if wrinkled from being rucked up around her waist. "You okay?"

She thought about him touching himself to the sight of her. Thought about _I_ am _nice, or this would be inside you right now._ He could not possibly want to do this again with her, but she would have new things to think about at night. She was grateful for the experience. "Yes," she said. "It was... very good."

She smoothed her skirts over her knees, and the prim gesture felt at odds with what she had been doing just moments before. But she felt the old doubt consume her: he'd been frustrated with something he'd been working on when she walked in, and she'd been something convenient to work it out on, no different from Father yelling at her when he was annoyed about his farmers or his merchants. She felt her shoulders slump.

Claude did not allow it. He took her face in both hands, drawing her up to look directly at him, and he pressed his lips to hers, very gently, as though she was a wild thing who would spook if he moved too quickly in her presence. Here was another thing she did not know how to do, but he was a capable professor; his hand went to the nape of her neck, and he tilted her head the way he wanted it. He coaxed her closed lips apart with brief, relentless kisses, his hand working at the base of her skull. The free hand roamed over the front of her body, skimming her breasts, her belly. She felt the insistent press of his tongue, and she opened to him gladly, eager to take what he offered. 

He still tasted like her. The thought made her wrap Marianne arms around Claude's neck and pull him down into her. He went, half-lying atop her on the table, his mouth roaming over her cheeks to press slow kisses below her earlobe, and down, to her neck. She shivered below him and ran her fingers through his hair. He did what _she_ wanted. When he finally eased away from her, he held her face in both hands, gazing deeply into her eyes. 

"And, you know," he said. He gave her one last kiss before pulling away. His hair was an awful mess, his clothes were in a similar state of disarray. Marianne fixed the sight in her memory. "Someone dumber than me would have fallen for the hand-holding thing—that was good, you looked serious. I'm guessing your father's been teaching you to be like a weasel like him?

"I... He's very shrewd, and he means well, most of the time, but"—Marianne took a deep breath to prepare herself, because she had never spoken ill of her adoptive father to anyone but Dorte—"I don't think he's a very good person."

"None of us are going to be very good people by the time this is over," Claude said grimly. 

It was oddly comforting to see him be less than pleasant, for once. But once again, the mood seemed to pass. Marianne did not trust this, but he had just put his mouth on her most intimate parts, so she could extend him some charity. 

"C'mon, I was getting sick of research anyway. Want to see how the tournament is going? I bet Lorenz thirty gold coins on Shamir winning, and I know for a fact that she's going to kick Catherine's ass halfway to Almyra, _and_ that Lorenz isn't good for the money. It's gonna be great." 

Claude winked at her, and there was nothing for it. Marianne went with him, holding his hand the whole way. 


End file.
